Reconstructed
by Webster
Summary: A series of mysterious accidents at a construction site leads Our Heros to go undercover as carpenters. Unfortunately for them, there's also a nasty cold virus going around the site. Sick! Sam case fic.


"Hang a left here," Sam directed, as the Winchesters entered Hastings, Michigan. "The construction site where Bill's working is about half a mile east of downtown. We should be in time to catch him on lunch break."

A dumpster with a broken sheet of drywall sticking out the top made the construction site easy to spot. Beyond it, they saw a large house. It might have been called a mansion once, but in the intervening years, it had suffered considerable decay. The siding had been stripped off, and the top of the building was covered in a giant tarp.

At that moment it was quiet, and several men sat to one side of the site, lunch pails in their laps. One of them stood up and moved toward the Winchesters' car.

The brothers climbed out. Dean leaned against his door, and Sam walked around to stand next to Bill.

"Thank you for coming. I still remember what you and your dad did here years ago, and when these accidents started up..."

"So what's the problem exactly?" Dean asked.

"It's this place we're trying to renovate. We started about two months ago. We should have been finished with the exterior work long before now, but we've had six different accidents, all bizarre. Some guys have been hurt pretty bad. Thompson's home with a broken leg, and Andrews is still in the hospital. I'd quit, but I can't leave my buddies to this. And jobs don't exactly fall off a tree around here, especially lately."

"Okay," Sam began, "Do you know the dates when the accidents occurred?"

Bill reached into his jacket. "Dean warned me you'd need information, so I wrote down everything I know. Date, time, and details of each accident, along with what we were doing to the house when it happened, and the names and phone numbers of everyone who was hurt."

"Well. That'll save some time." Sam smiled.

"Hey, I want this... problem solved nowish. Anything I can do to help."

"Actually, there are two more things. The first is, who used to own the building?"

"Sorry. All I know is it was vacant for a long time. Falling to pieces, really. My boss bought it from a bank that foreclosed it or something. What's the other thing?"

"Is there anyone around here at night?"

Sam leaned back from the desk and stretched his fingers. "Okay, the building was repossessed last year, for nonpayment of taxes. Prior to that, it belonged to a Harry Mills, who lives in Chicago. Harry inherited it from his uncle, Steven Mills, the last actual resident, who died in the building twelve years ago."

"Is he our spook?"

"Maybe. But his death was ruled an accident, and he was cremated."

"What kind of accident?" Dean asked.

"The police weren't entirely sure, because he was alone in the house when it happened. But apparently he fell down some stairs and landed facedown on a little statue, which caused 'acute abdominal trauma.' They think he was conscious for a while before he died from internal bleeding."

"Sounds a lot like what happened to Andrews last week, only it was a battery pack he hit."

"So you're thinking that he's not the spook-"

"He was the first victim. Maybe." Sam finished. "Which means we need to look into violent deaths further back, also anyone who might have had a grudge against him."

"You keep checking the records, I'll ask Bill."

"Okay, so there's no record that anyone else ever died bloody in or around the house, or in any way that might have involved the Mills family. There are two unsolved missing persons cases in this town dating from before Steven Mills died, however."

Dean nodded thoughtfully. "Names?"

"Amy Rogers, born 1965, missing September 10th 1981, suspected runaway. Cory Thompson. Born 1983, missing March 18th 1989, no leads." Sam showed him a picture of a teenage girl with dull eyes and a towheaded little boy in a blue windbreaker.

"The spirit of a murdered child is one of the most powerful kinds out there, and they're the most likely to start hurting total randoms," Dean pointed out. "Could be either of those kids, if Mills or his house had anything to do with them disappearing."

Sam sighed. "I hate looking for missing bodies. Did Bill know anything?"

"He didn't remember anything about the Mills family, but he directed me to his aunt, the local busybody. She said that the nephew never lived here, and the uncle was all alone for about twenty years. Kept to himself mostly, no close friends, but no one particularly hated him that she knew of."

Sam glanced at the clock. "It's a little late to call her again. We could check the site tonight, then ask her about about the missing kids tomorrow."

"Sounds like a plan."

"It's nice, when you're sneaking around a creepy old building in the middle of the night, to actually get help from someone who has a right to be there." Sam commented.

"Not having to wait for you to pick the locks, that helps too," Dean added. He scanned the power lines leading on to the site, nodding in satisfaction as the EMF barely flickered. "Everything's shut down, we should get nice clean readings."

They two slipped inside, and Dean placed the key back in his shirt pocket. Sam held a flashlight, and each had a shotgun ready.

They started from the top. The attic had been dismantled, but they climbed the attic stairs and pushed aside the tarp covering the house. Sam stowed his flashlight to avoid attention as they searched the excuse for a roof, but nothing uncanny appeared.

A circuit of the second floor and the first floor showed nothing more interesting.

"Why does it always have to be the basement?" Sam asked wearily.

"Hey, not my fault you got too tall."

Sam's fears were realized, as the basement ceiling hung just above the tips of Dean's spiked hair and left Sam bent over awkwardly.

For the first time, the EMF squealed as Dean swung it through the dark basement. He swung it again more slowly, then began walking through the basement, trying to pinpoint the source, but it seemed to move as Dean did. First it squealed at the southwest corner, then the corner was quiet and it squealed in the center of the south wall. Next, it led Dean back to the stairs.

Meanwhile, Sam paced the room with a flashlight. The big open basement was in better repair than most of the rest of the house, with fine wood paneling still intact. Sam stopped abruptly as the room went cold, but the cold spot vanished almost as soon as he walked into it. A tapping noise followed, and it too seemed to move as they tried to find the source.

"Okay, whatever it is, I can't pin it down." Dean admitted finally.

Sam rubbed his neck and sighed. "About time."

Dean looked back at his brother, another wisecrack on his lips as he bounced up the first step... and promptly cracked his head on the ceiling.

Sam laughed all the way back to the car as Dean rubbed at his skull indignantly.

"We have to come back in daylight, while the site is active." Sam pointed out, finally getting his amusement under control. "We're going to have to see one of these accidents to figure out what's really going on."

"We'd be a little conspicuous, sitting around watching the site all day," Dean pointed out.

"So, we don't sit around. We get hired. With all these accidents, they're probably short-handed."

Dean sighed loudly. Both men had worked construction before, when they needed to stay in one place longer than a credit card scam would hold out. It beat working as farmhands, but not by much.

"So, if we want to get hired, we should probably be on site in...five hours."

The crew chief proved to be a blunt-featured, dark-haired woman a little older than Dean. Her handshake was aggressive and her lips tight, but her eyes were friendly as she greeted the men Bill introduced his friends, Dave and Josh, new in town and looking for work.

"Work we have. Ever handle a circular saw?"

There was only one circular saw, so Sam left it to Dean's greater mechanical experience and joined another worker inside, ripping up the mouldering carpet.

"Seriously, who would buy this carpet?" Sam's new co-worker Eric demanded loudly, as he pulled up tacks in the corner of a bedroom. "I mean, it's falling to pieces now, but even new, how could this possibly have looked good?"

Sam just nodded.

"Purple carpet. The entire second floor and the stairs, in cheap-ass purple carpet. Even the frickin closets. Hey, you got all the tacks on that side?"

The two men each grabbed a corner of the carpet and yanked. It rolled up, releasing clouds of dust, both from the upper fibers and from the disintegrating carpet itself. They rolled it up into a sloppy bundle, then Sam carried it out as Eric began ripping up tacks in the next room.

When Sam got back, Eric was coughing loudly. "Frickin dust," he muttered, a complaint that was repeated throughout the morning as they de-carpeted the house. By lunchtime, Eric was sniffling nonstop. Going outside for lunch didn't seem to help Eric's sinuses, however, because he spent most of lunch mopping at his nose with a napkin.

The third or fourth time Eric blew his nose, Bill looked up. "I think you've got the bug that's going around."

"No way, man," Eric protested. "I got a date with Kara tomorrow night, I am NOT sick. It's just dust."

Bill laughed. "Since when does dust bother you?"

"Since now."

"Yeah, right."

Eric sulked.

"Morning, gentlemen. We're re-framing the roof today. I was hoping we could get away with just re-roofing, but too many of the studs were rotted. Josh, Dave, upstairs."

The hunters scrambled up the stairs onto what was once the attic floor. The A-shaped roof supports lay on the ground outside, some of them already nailed together. Bill hooked the first one into the winch and pulled it up to the second floor. The other workmen stopped and stared as Sam reached out and, entirely unaided, pulled the collection of two-by-fours off the crane and slid it into place. Dean stepped up with the power drill to secure it.

"Don't we usually have two guys do that?" A younger one asked.

"Sometimes three."

At the third beam, however, Sam had to pause to sneeze. He wiped at his nose with a napkin pulled from his pocket.

By lunch, Sam had run out of napkins and his head was beginning to feel clogged. As he put away the drill, he coughed quietly into a shirt cuff.

While they were eating lunch, Andi headed over. "You two have done real good work here the last couple days. Ever since Dave tinkered with the truck, it's running better than it has all year. And Josh's shoulders really came in handy when we were framing the roof this morning! If you're planning to stick around, I'd be willing to take you on permanently." She grinned. "You both look like I hit you with a brick. Think about it.

"And Josh? Take something for that cold."

Sam winced and nodded ruefully, then stowed away his lunch and went back to work.

Less than an hour later, the peaceful and productive working day was nearly interrupted by a seventh accident. This time, it was Bill.

Sam was busy placing plywood over the beams of the new roof, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw his drill pull itself up off the beam where he'd hooked it securely and begin hurtling toward a man standing on the ground. It was already too far to catch, so he just shouted, "Duck left!"

Bill, thank God, didn't look up like an idiot, just did as he was told. The drill smashed and broke apart as it hit a ladder lying on the ground. "It's okay," Sam said, already headed for the ground. "Everyone's okay."

Dean was outside, cutting wood panels to finish the roof, when the yell and crash from the other side of the house broke through the whirring of power tools. He was already halfway there when he heard Sam call off the emergency, but Dean had another idea. He sprinted for the basement stairs, EMF in hand. Just as he hoped, the active spirit was easier to pin down, and the EMF clearly identified the east wall, third panel from the end.

Once they was out of earshot, the brothers put their heads together.

"We got everything we need?"

"I think so. Still, we should stick around until quitting time, just to make sure there are no more accidents."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight."

The buzzing of the alarm clock seemed to drill straight though Sam's head. They'd eaten right after work, or rather Dean had eaten and Sam had played with half a sandwich, then they had returned to their room for a short nap as they waited for night to cover their illegal activities.

"Eleven pm already," Dean groaned.

Sam didn't even bother answering. If he'd felt unwell before, now he felt simply awful. The room seemed much too hot, but as he pushed away the blankets, he shivered. His throat felt raw, and the fluids in his head sloshed as he sat up.

Still. Lives at stake and all that. Sam climbed out of bed and staggered towards his pants, slung over a chair. Dean slapped him on the back halfway there. "Let's burn some bones!"

The slap made him gasp, which triggered a painful coughing fit.

Dean stopped halfway through the bathroom door. "Hey, are you feeling up to this?"

Sam paused briefly. If he told the truth, Dean would ground him and try to burn the remains himself, without backup. But if he insisted he was fine, Dean would know he was lying, and then probably check his temperature, at which point the game would be up.

"Throat's kinda sore," Sam admitted softly. "I'll let you do the talking."

Dean winced at the sound of his voice. "Yeah, I'll do that. Can you yell if you have to?"

Sam frowned, shrugged.

"Hey, if you get in trouble, just cough." The bathroom door shut behind Dean.

Before the Winchesters entered the house, they prepared thoroughly. In the sandy lot behind the house where the workers parked, they built a hasty pyre out of cardboard boxes in case they found remains of substantial size. The shovels they kept in the trunk were well suited to digging up graves in soil, but poorly suited to removing wood-paneled walls. Luckily, Andi kept some tools at the site, inside a locked storage shed. Shutting basement door to hide the noise, they removed the nails holding the suspicious panel in place and tugged it away from the studs.

Sam had always found hidden corpses to be particularly pitiful, and this one had been inside the wall so long that the face was gone. Still, it was less than four feet long, and bits of the child's little white sneakers could still be seen in the bottom of the hasty grave.

"Cory Thompson. Born 6/4/83, missing 3/18/89." Dean quoted. "Dammit."

It was worst of all when, as now, they had to burn the body entirely, leaving behind no trace for the family who had missed their child for so long.

They carefully wrapped it in a salt-encrusted blanket, like the one they'd used as their father's shroud. Cory had weighed only forty pounds alive, and, even dizzy and exhausted, Sam found what was left of him barely heavier than the blanket.

When Sam reached the stairs, Cory finally woke up and realized what was happening.

A stray hammer came flying out of the darkness toward them, and Sam jumped aside, holding the body against his chest. "Go!" Dean yelled.

Sam ran up the stairs two at a time, head down over the bundle to avoid the ceiling. He dashed out the back door, laid the body gently down on the boxes, and drew his lighter. Before he could use it, however, something tossed him aside. Cory had never learned to manifest visibly, it seemed, but he was quite skilled at moving objects and people, far stronger than he ever could have been alive. A twelve-foot board dragged itself out of the dumpster and hurtled toward Sam.

A gunshot split the night, and rock salt burst over the board. It dropped to the ground, harmlessly. Dean ran across the yard, but another board sailed toward him, and he threw himself flat to avoid it. Taking advantage of the distraction, Sam leaned over and lit the pyre. For a moment, the air pressed against him, solid as a wall, then it relaxed, letting Sam slump back to the ground as the remains burst fully into flame.

An hour later, pyre burned out and buried in the sand, they left. Sam climbed into the passenger seat and flopped down, not bothering to shut the door behind him. His hands sat limply in his lap as his eyes fluttered shut.

"Sam? You going to sleep already? Shut the door so we can get outta here."

"Sam?" Dean leaned across the seat and put a hand on his brother's shoulder. Sam blinked, then stared at him dully.

"Did you get hurt?"

Sam turned away, coughing harshly into a cuff.

Dean's hand moved up to the side of his face, then jerked away. "Dammit, why didn't you tell me you were feeling this bad?"

Without waiting for an answer, Dean turned Sam's face toward him and took a good long look. "You're dehydrated. Here." He cracked open a bottle of apple juice and held it out.

Sam took the juice as if he wasn't quite sure what it was for.

"Drink it, moron." Dean leaned over him to shut the door, then pulled out of the lot.

Sam sipped at the juice. It seemed to clear his head a little. As the fog lifted, he realized Dean was right-he had gotten dehydrated. Which was stupid and unnecessary.

They were back at the hotel before Sam finished even half of his bottle of juice. All the aches and tiredness that the hunt had pushed aside seemed to pile on him worse than before, and even the apple juice burned his sore throat. Only the thought of fresh tissues pulled him out of the car and into the room.

As usual, once he had the chance to go to bed, Sam found himself restless. He headed over to the table where his computer sat and opened it up to record the end of the hunt, blowing his nose with great relief.

"You know, you're supposed to be smart," Dean pointed out.

Sam looked up, confused.

"Bed, Sam. You'll feel better once you're in a clean shirt and asleep."

"But if I'm asleep, I won't know," he protested reflexively, breaking off to cough again.

"Exactly, if you're asleep, you won't feel crummy any more. Come on, you have to be at least as tired as I am right now. And, because somebody insisted it was just a sniffle and he didn't need any medicine, I didn't pick up any while the stores were still open." And why, exactly, had he allowed Sam's assurances to override his instincts, Dean wondered.

Sam waved a hand, dismissing medicine from consideration. Then he pushed himself up from the chair and stood there a moment, holding the chair back and waiting for the spinning to stop. Dean stepped forward and grabbed his arm, leading him slowly into bed. Next, Dean grabbed three out of the room's four pillows and stuffed them under Sam's head, so he could sleep propped up, then flung Sam some clean clothing and the tissue box before getting himself changed.

When Dean got out of the bathroom, Sam was changed and sprawled across the pillows, trying to look asleep and peaceful, trying to look restful but, to Dean's eyes, clearly wide awake and miserable. As he watched, Sam's nose wrinkled, and he tried to bury his face in a pillow. The tickle wouldn't go away, however, so Sam raised his head wearily and grabbed a tissue.

He sneezed three times, loud and painful-sounding, then blew his nose with a wet sound. As he realized Dean was watching, he turned away in embarrassment, curling up away from him.

"Hey, Sammy." Dean sat down beside him and ran a hand through his floppy hair, damp with sweat. Sam was running a pretty good fever, enough to make him cranky, but not enough to be dangerous.

Sam uncurled slightly.

"Your head hurt? Sinuses?"

Sam didn't answer, but Dean began rubbing the back of his neck anyway. Sam uncurled a little more, and his shoulders relaxed. Within a few minutes, Sam was asleep for real. Dean lost no time in falling asleep as well.

With any luck, Sam would sleep a good long time and wake up better.

Unfortunately for Dean, Sam was awake by seven the next morning, still feverish and worried about the case, insisting that one of them return to the site to check

"Dean, just go already." Sam whispered.

"They're putting up the siding today. I hate putting up siding."

"I'll be fine, and you've gotta check the site one more time, make sure..." Sam broke off and began coughing violently.

"Yeah, you sound totally fine."

Still coughing, Sam couldn't speak, but he glared at his brother and motioned toward the door.

"Okay, I'm going. Drink some water, and stay put. Try to get some more sleep, I'll be back soon, with medicine."

Within a couple hours, Dean had been over the site thoroughly while pretending to be putting up siding. Not a flicker on the EMF, not even when Andi, muttering about stupid teenage vandals, ordered the crew to restore the paneling in the basement.

When the last piece of paneling was nailed back into place, Dean was gone, along with his car, and no one had seen him go.


End file.
